Tuesday, 18 September 2012

To celebrate the release of Monster High: Ghoul’s Rule (out 8th October), National Cupcake Week (September 17 - 23) and the coming of Halloween,The Boutique Cupcake designed some special quirky cupcakes for you to go cupcake crazy at home! The styles range in technical difficulty allowing kids to create as many/few styles as they wish.

Things you will need:

The edible bits:

12 cupcakesbuttercream

sugarpaste – black, pink & blue (these colours can be shop-bought or made up yourself using gel food colouring – we always use shop-bought black as it’s hard to create a true black from white)

blue & pink sugar balls

black cake decorating pen

black food colouring gel

edible glitter/sparkles (available from cake decorating shops)

The equipment / tools of the trade!

icing bags (we use disposable ones)

icing tip (we used one with a 5 pointed star shape at the top (wilton 1M), though use can use anyone you fancy)

non-stick chopping board

rolling pin (non-stick)

round / fluted biscuit cutter (we used a 7cm one)

small sharp knife (to cut around the templates)

small palette knife (to lift sugarpaste from the board)

small heart biscuit cutter

toothpicks

greaseproof paper & a tray - to allow decorations to dry (overnight)

Off we go!

Firstly, before you do anything – wash your hands!

To make the pink, black & blue discs:

Choose which colour you want to make first – then take a lump of colour sugarpaste and knead it on your board (you may find it easier to sprinkle a little icing sugar on the board if you haven’t added any Tylo Powder to your sugarpaste to stop it sticking; you can also where disposable plastic gloves to stop it sticking to your hands)

Then take your rolling pin and roll it flat, not too thin, we find they work best about 0.25cm thick

Take your palette knife and skim under the flat piece of icing to make sure it lifts easily away from the board. Now take your cutter and cut out 4 discs

Using your palette knife lift the discs onto the greaseproof paper and leave to set (ideally overnight) – repeat for the other two colours so that you end up with 12 discs in total.

To make the black hearts (easy)

Roll out some black sugarpaste (as you did for the discs) – using a small heart cutter cut out some hearts. These can be placed in the middle of the pink or blue discs. You can sprinkle a little glitter on the middle of them for a little added ‘bling’!

To make the blue hearts (easy)

Roll out some black sugarpaste (as you did for the discs) – using a small heart cutter cut out some hearts. These can be placed in the middle of the pink or black discs. The using your black pen, add the stitching’ to each heart – don’t press too hard!

To make the coffin toppers (moderate)

Score a couple of black discs with the blunt side of a knife so that you have a criss-cross pattern ( press gently as you don’t wan to go all the way through the icing!). Place your pink & balls sugar balls where the lines meet.

To make the coffinroll out some blue & pink sugarpaste as you did earlier. The using your small sharp knife cut out a small coffin shape in each colour ( we made the blue very slightly larger to create a border effect ) – as you did with the blue hearts, you can know create the door handle etc with your black pen. We added a blue ball in the centre of the key hole as the door handle. Now place onto your ‘criss cross’ discs

To make the bats with hearts (moderate)

As you did earlier, roll out some black sugarpaste. Using either a bat cutter or a template made from the Internet (see top tips) cut out some bat shapes. Then using a very small heart cutter cut of some pink hearts to go in the middle, we placed some white sugar balls in the middle but you can just use glitter if you prefer as you did for the black hearts. Once finished they can be placed in the middle of the blue discs.

To make the lips (moderate)

Either using a template cut for the Internet or by cutting free-hand, cut out some pink lips from rolled-out sugarpaste. The teeth are cut from white sugarpaste and placed in the middle of the lips. Again we used a little glitter to each decoration. These can then be laced in the middle of the blue discs.

To make the skulls (difficult)

Roll out some white sugarpaste as you did earlier. Using a template (or free-hand) – cut out some skull shaped toppers. To make the bows we cut out tiny hearts and placed them next to each other and added a little blob of pink sugarpaste in the middle to create the bow effect, we then drew on some black lines to make them look more realistic.

We used the black decorating gel (not the pen) to create the eyes and nose. Then using a toothpick we carefully “pulled” away from the eye to create the eyelashes.

Once the bows have been placed in the top right hand corner of the head the skulls can be out onto some black discs.

Once your decorations have been left to set – ideally overnight you are ready to put everything together.

To put them all together

Once your ‘toppers’ have set (on greaseproof paper) then you are ready to put everything together.

1) You need to put a swirl or blob of icing on each cake – to do this cut the tip off of your icing bag and place the nozzle inside. Fill the bag with some of your buttercream icing – do not fill the bag more than half-full otherwise you may find the icing spills out of the top as you squeeze!

2) Twist the bag above where the icing reaches to stop it spilling out, then carefully pipe a ring around the edge of your cupcakes – if you prefer you can just squeeze a ‘blob’ in the centre which is a little easier

3) Now place each topper that you have made on the icing pushing down gently so they lie flat

Top tips!

1) Add something called Tylo Powder to your sugarpaste to make it a little less sticky and it helps your toppers to set. This can be bought from any good cake supply shop or online.

2) Add a little icing sugar on your board if you find that your sugarpaste is sticking – don’t add too much or it will cause the sugarpaste to crumble/dry out

3) You can colour your own sugarpaste from scratch – you will need gel colours rather than liquid and gloves should be worn to avoid your hands turning pink or blue! Black is very difficult to make so should be shop-bought ideally.

4) Whilst your toppers are best left to set you can put them on straight away, they may not look as flat on the cakes that’s all

5) Remember not to roll too thin as it is much harder to handle

6) We use something called Edible Glue (This can be bought from any good cake supply shop or online) – we use it to stick the sugar balls to the sugarpaste and the smaller pieces onto the discs. This isn’t essential but will hold everything in place.